The video of Tyre Nichols’ arrest makes for unbearable viewing. The 29-year-old father is dragged out of a car before being set upon by five black policemen. Lawyers for his family said the officers acted like a ‘pack of wolves’; after watching the film, it’s hard to dispute that description.
As the backlash to the incident in Memphis on 10 January intensifies, there are plenty of unanswered question. But it seems that Black Lives Matter is already jumping to conclusions. Any hope that Nichols’ horrifying death might spark some unity in the United States has been dashed by the release of a demoralising statement from BLM. Rather than using Nichols’ death to campaign for meaningful reform, BLM has doubled down on its mission to defund the police while suggesting any violence perpetrated against people of colour is automatically racist.
‘Tyre should be alive today,’ says D’Zhane Parker, a board member for the BLM ‘Global Network Foundation’.
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